Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 30

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 30

(August 10, 2007)

Volume 7, Number 30
Friday, August 10, 2007

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
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SOVIET PRACTICE OF INSTITUTIONALIZING DISSIDENTS REVIVED. “Heavy sedatives keep Larisa Arap languishing in a woozy haze at a mental asylum, the victim not of a troubled mind, her family says, but of a Soviet era practice that continues to muzzle and punish dissent in today's Russia,” “Chicago Tribune” correspondent Alex Rodriguez reported on August 7 from Murmansk. He described how earlier this summer, Arap, an activist in former chess champion Garry Kasparov's opposition movement, the United Civil Front, coauthored an article that reported abusive practices at local psychiatric clinics. When Arap appeared at a Murmansk clinic to pick up a document on July 5, a doctor called police and had her taken to an asylum. The United Civil Front believes that Arap was institutionalized because of her political activity.

The doctors handling Arap's case explained to her daughter Taisiya the reason they wanted her committed to a mental institution. "One of the doctors asked whether I thought it was normal to write such things," Rodriguez quoted Taisiya Arap as saying. "[The doctor] said, 'It's not possible to write such things. It's forbidden.'"

On August 6, Interfax reported that doctors may be looking for “a dignified way out,” quoting Yelena Vasilyeva, a friend of Arap’s and leader of the Murmansk branch of the United Civil Front. Arap’s husband and Vasilyeva met Larisa Arap at the clinic in Apatity and talked to the doctors. “Whenever we asked them why Larisa was brought to the clinic by force, they gave evasive answers or asked their own questions," she told Interfax.

Vasilyeva and Arap's relatives last saw Larisa on July 31 at the Apatity clinic, Rodriguez reported. She was underweight and groggy. "She ran to us and cried bitterly," Taisiya Arap recalled. "She told me she's dying in there."

Rordriguez quoted human rights activists as saying that authorities are returning to the Soviet practice of using psychiatry to suppress political opponents or punish activists. “We're returning to this Soviet scenario when psychiatric institutions are used as punitive instruments,” Yuri Savenko, president of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, told Rodriguez. Citing Savenko, Rodriguez wrote that “Russian law allows authorities to commit someone to a psychiatric institution if the person represents a danger to himself or others, or is incapable of caring for himself. Ultimately, a judge must approve the forced placement of someone in an asylum. In practice, however, judges routinely accept the psychiatric evaluation submitted by local authorities without question, and rarely allow the individual to submit an independent psychiatric evaluation.”

For instance, Marina Trutko, a human rights lawyer from Dubna, a city north of Moscow, quarreled with a judge in court in 2002 and was forcibly hospitalized at a mental institution for several days, Rodriguez reported. She was committed for psychiatric treatment again in 2004 and once more last year, when she spent six weeks at a clinic "I still get threats from the Dubna court," Trutko was quoted as saying. "For them, I'm a thorn in their side. As a human rights lawyer, I win too many cases."

In another case cited by Rodriguez, in Cheboksary, a factory city on the Volga, Roman Lukin and other local human rights activists infuriated authorities by holding a mock election in 2005 to protest President Vladimir Putin's decision to abolish the election of provincial governors and have them appointed by the Kremlin. Prosecutors ordered that Lukin, who had a successful company making cement, be committed to a psychiatric clinic. He spent two weeks there. In May, he was sent to Moscow’s Serbsky Institute, infamous for incarcerating Soviet era dissidents, for a month of further examination. As a result, Lukin said, he went bankrupt. "This method is the easiest way to get rid of someone. You don't have to hire a killer,” he said. “There's no risk at all."

KADYROV THREATENS REMAINING REBELS WITH EXTERMINATION. There will be no “militants” and “illegal armed units” left in Chechnya by the end of 2007, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov announced on August 3, as reported by Interfax. Those few rebels who “are still hiding in the forest” either have to “come to their senses” and report immediately to law enforcement agencies or “face extermination in the course of special operations,” he added.

CHECHEN FOLK ENSEMBLE MEMBERS ASK FOR ASYLUM IN FINLAND. Members of one of Chechnya's most prestigious folk ensembles have asked for political asylum after arriving for concerts in Finland, “The Moscow Times” reported. Eighteen Chechens, including seven children, applied for asylum after they arrived in Helsinki on August 5, Mikael Storsjy, a local human rights activist said. The group consists of Bislan Saraliyev, manager of the female vocal group "Zhowkhar," four singers, two male musicians plus their spouses and children, Storsjy said. He said he had arranged their performances. But upon arrival, they told him that they wanted to apply for political asylum, so they went to the police directly from the train station.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov downplayed the incident by calling it political opportunism. "It was not the whole ensemble, just four former performers who went, and they did not leave for political reasons, but simply changed their place of residence," he said in a statement released by the Chechen presidential administration. "Any citizen has the right to choose his residence, and if they want to live in Western Europe, they have the right to do so," Kadyrov said.

Though ensemble members said they have no political ambitions, Storsjy said they stated that their reason for leaving was that life in Chechnya was unbearable, with “mop-up” of rebels threatening everyone. The group has a good chance to get asylum status, “The Moscow Times” noted. Whoever can prove that he is from Chechnya will get refugee status, Esko Repo, head of the asylum department in the Finnish immigration service, told the newspaper. Up to 15% of the 176 applicants from Russia in 2006 were Chechens, he said. According to Storsjy, Chechen refugees in Finland number 210. Human rights activists quoted by “The Moscow Times” said that in recent years Scandinavian countries have become a haven for refugees, after legislation on refugees was tightened in much of Western Europe. Storsjy said Norway has a Chechen refugee population of 2,000, including Anzor Maskhadov, son of former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, killed by Russian forces in 2005. In Grozny, many people are waiting for their passports that have become easier to obtain, the newspaper reported.

KILLER GETS 12 YEARS, ACCOMPLICES GET OFF EASY. On August 6, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced the man convicted of killing anti-fascist activist Timur Kacharava to 12 years in prison, “The Moscow Times” reported. Last week, a jury convicted Andrei Shabalin of stabbing Kacharava in a 2005 mob attack classified as a hate crime. Human rights activists have long objected to the light sentences for hate crimes, and Shabalin's accomplices benefited from the practice, as their punishments ranged between two years in jail and three-year suspended sentences. The seven defendants were aged from 17 to 20 years at the time of the crime.

Kacharava's mother watched in silence as the defendants cheered and waved to their parents and friends from their courtroom cage. One defendant's mother shouted, "I told you it's going to be fine."

The sentences left Kacharava's friends bewildered, the newspaper reported. It quoted an anti-fascist activist to the effect that it is “absurd’ that according to the court, the person who slit Kacharava's throat is a murderer but accomplices preventing him from resisting did not assist in the murder. Lead prosecutor Svetlana Yefimenko said she would not appeal, calling the sentences "fair" as most of the culprits were juveniles who pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigation.

FOUR NEO-NAZIS INJURED IN A BRAWL WITH CENTRAL ASIANS. Police in Moscow found four neo-Nazis lying on the ground with stab wounds, apparently after picking a fight with unidentified men from Central Asia, according to an August 2 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Responding to reports of a brawl near the Ostankino TV tower, police found the four injured men bleeding on the sidewalk, too drunk to give descriptions of their attackers. None of the injuries was life threatening. Although police initially denied racist motives for the brawl, an official later told the web site Gazeta.ru that the men belonged to an "informal youth group" -- a euphemism for neo-Nazi gangs.

NEO-NAZI LEADER GETS SLAP ON THE WRIST FOR ATTACKING POLICE MAJOR. On August 8, a Moscow Region court issued a shockingly mild two-year suspended sentence to neo-Nazi leader Alexander Barkashov for his role in a December 2005 assault on police Major Aleksandr Stekolnivkov, “The Moscow Times” reported. The attack involved a hammer, an ax, and a metal rod. Barkashov was the founder of the Russian National Unity that in its heyday in the 1990s claimed 20,000 members and was a political party as well as a well-organized paramilitary organization. He promoted the use of the swastika.

According to the national daily "Vremya Novostey," Barkashov was found guilty of "using force against a representative of the government" rather than "hooliganism." Prosecutors had asked for 4 1/2 years in prison for Barkashov and four years in prison for each of his three accomplices whose ages range from 25 to 44. They received 20-month sentences but were released, having served out their time while in detention. Despite the fact that Barkashov will not serve time, his lawyer Yury Kachan said he would appeal because the sentence is “unfounded and illegal."

NEW EXTREMIST GROUP FACES CHARGES OF INCITING ETHNIC HATRED. A group is facing charges of inciting ethnic hatred and forming an extremist organization in Blagoveshchensk (Amur Region), according to an August 2 report in the local newspaper "Amurskaya Pravda." Igor Terekhov and two other members of the Union of the Russian People (a group named after a pre-Revolutionary organization that led pogroms against Jews) will soon stand trial. According to prosecutors, the group formed in January of this year and held a meeting that featured "aggressive statements against the Jewish nation."

ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE CONTINUES IN ZHITOMIR, UKRAINE. Within weeks of an attack on a rabbi in Zhitomir, Ukraine, two young men with "closely-shaven haircuts" attacked a community leader and his wife, according to an August 8 report by the AEN news agency. Nokhum Tamarin -- director of the local branch of the Federation of Jewish Communities -- was walking with his wife Brakha the evening of August 6 when they were assaulted. The youths hit both of them several times in the face and right before fleeing punched Mrs. Tamarin one last time as she lay on the ground. An ambulance took the couple to an emergency room.

PRESS FREEDOM DECLINED IN RUSSIA AND AZERBAIJAN, U.S. COMMISSION TOLD. On August 2, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe to take a lead in making press freedom a priority in American foreign policy. At a hearing on Capitol Hill, CPJ voiced concern with the grim record of impunity in journalist murders and violent attacks against reporters -- the main threat to press freedom in Russia and other former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Turkmenistan. CPJ pointed out that in Russia and Azerbaijan conditions for the press have declined more than in other Eurasian states.

"The international community, including the United States, cannot afford to be indifferent to the deteriorating press freedom records of Russia and Azerbaijan," CPJ’s Nina Ognianova said. "Journalists increasingly resort to self-censorship to avoid dangerous, even deadly repercussions. As a result, the Russian and Azerbaijani public suffers --uninformed about sensitive issues such as human rights abuses, corruption, high-level crime, and, in the case of Chechnya, an ongoing war." In Azerbaijan, where presidential elections are scheduled for October 2008, seven journalists are in prison on spurious charges because of their work. Ognianova called the decriminalization of defamation an important first step to reverse Azerbaijan's disturbing record as a leading jailer of journalists in the region.

Journalist Fatima Tlisova from the Northern Caucasus Republic of Karachaevo-Cherkesiya, who had formerly worked for the Associated Press, told the commission about her ordeal at the hands of Russia's FSB (heir to the KGB). After exposing corruption and human rights abuses, she was beaten, tortured, kidnapped, and sickened with poison. Her relatives were threatened, and police detained her 16-year-old son for no apparent reason.

Commission Chairman Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Co-Chairman Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) sent a letter to the Russian authorities in June, expressing concern "about efforts to limit media freedom in Russia." They have received no reply as yet.

IN SWISS COURTS, JEWS TOP LIST OF ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION CASES. Jews top the list of discrimination victims in Switzerland, according to a new study, released by the Federal Commission against Racism. Between 1995 and 2004, the study says, more than a quarter of the 277 criminal proceedings based on charges of violating anti-discrimination laws involved discrimination against Jews. Foreigners composed the next largest group of victims, 20% of the total. Dark-skinned people were among the most likely targets, the study said. More than 80% of the cases ended in a guilty verdict and about 12% of perpetrators were classified as right-wing extremists.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, THE SEARCH FOR ‘THE NATIONAL IDEA.’ * * * “The closer we come to the end of [President Vladimir] Putin's second term, the more the Kremlin needs to find an idea that would preserve everything it has achieved during the past eight years,” wrote columnist and Carnegie Moscow Center associate Lilia Shevtsova in “The Moscow Times” of August 7. “Searching for enemies and casting the West in the role of the principal foe has turned out to be the most successful method for rallying the people. Russia has adopted aggressive foreign policy rhetoric…. Anti-Western sentiment has become the new national idea.”

STALIN’S PURGES REMEMBERED IN RUSSIA
Gravesite Ceremony and New Research Mark the Start of the Massacres 70 Years Ago

1. ORDER 00447 CARRIED OUT. Dozens of relatives of the victims of Stalin's purges, along with a few hundred other mourners held a Remembrance Day ceremony at the mass graves site of Sandormokh on August 5, the 70th anniversary of the start of the mass killings, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. The event was organized by Memorial, a Russian human rights group. August 5 marks the day in 1937 when Stalin henchman Nikolai Yezhov issued Order 00447 for the mass executions of "anti-Soviet and socially dangerous elements."

"We cannot forget that this evil took place. Otherwise, evil will beget evil," AFP quoted Liza Derybash, 79, as saying at the commemoration. Her mother was executed and buried in Sandormokh. An estimated 7,000 people are believed to lie buried in 40 mass graves so far found at Sandormokh, near the town of Medvezhegorsk, the site of a former prison camp 620 miles north of Moscow. "It had to be a remote place so the executions wouldn't be heard,” said Tatyana Voronina, 30, a Memorial researcher. “It was a secret place.” “The site is now strewn with hundreds of crosses extending deep into the dense pine forest,” AFP reported. “Flowers ring the mass graves, which are marked by depressions in the ground.”

Memorial’s research located the graves in 1997 and has since held a yearly ceremony at the site. AFP mentioned that “a memorial cross” was also transported by boat from the Solovetsky Islands in northern Russia, one of the first prison camps, to an execution ground outside Moscow, where it was consecrated.

“Russian media has paid scant attention to the anniversary, and both Memorial campaigners and relatives of the victims complain that there is a reluctance on the part of officials to commemorate the Soviet purges,” AFP added, quoting Voronina as saying: "There's a new regime that wants heroes, not victims... They prefer to celebrate the victory in World War II. It doesn't make you feel proud when you know that it's your own people who did this.” There is also widespread indifference among many Russians, participants at the event told AFP.

2. RESEARCHER REVEALS THREE CATEGORIES OF PURGES. Nevertheless, next day the official news agency RIA Novosti ran a newsworthy item on the purges, signed by Gennady Bordyugov, identified as “a research project manager with the Association of Researchers of Russian Society and a member of the RIA Novosti expert council.” The Soviet effort to wipe out domestic enemies prior to the widely feared war with Germany had three dimensions, Bordyugov wrote. In addition to the mass arrests and executions targeting leading party functionaries, army officers, and intellectuals, as well as kulaks, there was a campaign against ethnic groups.

Called the "personnel revolution," the first dimension of the Great Terror is the best known. It began in the fall of 1936 with the Moscow Trials, in which party functionaries, military leaders, writers, and scientists were convicted of trumped-up charges of anti-Soviet activities. The second dimension was linked with the operation directed against the rich peasants known as kulaks. In its order of July 30, 1937, the secret police then called NKVD defined the groups to be targeted. A new category, criminal offenders (bandits, robbers, thieves, smugglers, and swindlers), was added to the list of hostile elements: ex-kulaks, members of anti-Soviet parties, rebels, fascists, spies, and the clergy.

This way, Bordyugov analyzed, “the political leaders criminalized protests and other manifestations of social discontent, while at the same time politicizing routine crimes, regarding them as opposition to Soviet law and order.” The NKVD specified the punishment: death for the former and eight to 10 years in prison or a concentration camp for the latter. The secret police also established quotas for the number of people to be imprisoned and executed in each region, territory, and republic. According to Bordyugov’s research, a total of 767,397 people were sentenced under this order, and according to the latest estimates, 386,798 of them were shot.

“The third and least studied dimension of the terror deals with the elimination of ‘counter-revolutionary national contingents’” between February and November 1938, Bordyugov wrote. “Initially, these purges were eclipsed by the main operation against the kulaks.” But in July 1937, the NKVD launched the purge of ethnic Germans, and the liquidation of "Polish subversives and spies" followed in August. In September, the NKVD launched an operation against the so-called "Harbin expatriates" who were mostly Russians who had worked on the Chinese Military Railroad and returned home only to be blacklisted as "Japanese spies." But the largest ethnic operation was the deportation of the entire Korean population from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, according to Bordyugov.

The actions were supposedly directed at the Soviet Union's main foes: Germany, Poland, and Japan. Bordyugov found that the NKVD and the Central Committee “associated the purges with stepped-up efforts to counter enemy intelligence operations,” and the enemy was also suspected of provoking insurgencies.

In 1938, the purges extended to Afghans, Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Chinese, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Macedonians residing on Soviet territory. According to Bordyugov’s research, a total of 335,513 people were convicted under the NKVD’s "ethnic" orders, and an estimated 244,925 of them -- 73% -- were sentenced to death.

The Great Terror's “ethnic dimension” was “sometimes exploited for political purposes,” Bordyugov commented. “Historians often quote Ukrainian People's Commissar of the Interior Alexader Uspensky as saying that all Ukrainian Poles and Germans were engaged in spying and subversion and that 75%-80% of Ukrainians were ‘bourgeois nationalists.’ People's Commissar Lavrenty Beria was fighting against ‘counter-revolutionary nationalists’ in Georgia, while NKVD officer Vladimir Mikhailov was doing the same in Tatarstan. In Turkmenistan, the authorities were worried about the activities of the armed nationalist forces (former Basmachi, or counter-revolutionary robbers in Central Asia, and emigre religious leaders who were ostensibly trying to establish a ‘Turkic-Tatar state’).”

The communist parties of the various Soviet republics “showered the Kremlin with requests to raise death quotas for ethnic and other operations,” Bordyugov wrote. “However, now the purges of nationalists are often blamed not on Stalin and his government, but on the Jews or Russians in the regime. The Nazis were the first to make such an allegation when, after losing the battle of Stalingrad, they emphasized the ethnic side of the terror in order to mobilize armed detachments of ethnic minorities. Later on, various emigre circles began to play the terror's ethnic card. These efforts began to wear away at the essence of the Great Terror, that horrific tragedy of the 20th century. Today, the victims of the purges are exploited in political battles and election campaigns. Sooner or later, the public will realize the futility of this dangerous gambling with the past and will return to an honest discussion in order to prevent such a calamity from ever happening again.”

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